


come on and do us all a favor

by alchemistique



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bipper, Blood, Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, OR IS IT, Self-Harm, a mild sock opera au, but only mild, sort of, this boy is a mess and so is this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3093821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemistique/pseuds/alchemistique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I didn’t know what to do,” she whispers, and he can see the look of genuine apology and anguish on her face, can hear it in her voice. “It happened again.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	come on and do us all a favor

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of fic ideas for this show. Consider this a taste of bigger and better things yet to come. Title is “Animals” by Muse.

Mabel dubs it the Bipper Incident, that first time when they’re twelve. She doesn’t expect it to stick.

The puppet show is easy enough to explain away – weirder things have happened in Gravity Falls. A clever story about a strange encounter in the woods gone wrong is all it takes to keep Grunkle Stan from asking too many questions.

But when Dipper utters the name _Bill_ , crowns himself with it like a title, she’s not sure what to think. It’s a name she hasn’t heard in over two years, when they’d just turned ten and decided they’d both outgrown their imaginary friend. She thinks it’s a joke at first, Dipper pulling a somewhat out-of-character prank on her, but when his eyes turn to slits and his voice cracks into a high, distorted tenor, she knows that they’re both in for more than they bargained for.

It’s over almost as soon as it begins, a trail of debris and desecrated sock puppets in his wake, and when Mabel meets her twin’s eyes she knows she’ll never be able to tell the truth to another soul. The shock and sorrow mirrored in his eyes tells her that he agrees.

*

The following summer, Dipper wakes up one night to discover his hands firmly tied to his rickety headboard, a strip of duct tape across his mouth. 

He can feel, without looking, the bruises blooming across his arms and legs, is almost certain that there’s a whiff of blood in the air. Mabel is crouched at the foot of his bed, as far from him as possible, and the moonlight falling through their triangular window shows a cut on her lip. Her brown eyes shine wide and scared and tearful.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she whispers, and he can see the look of genuine apology and anguish on her face, can hear it in her voice. “It happened again.”

*

The clock has just announced three am when she hears the door to her room creak open.

She cracks one eye but otherwise lays stock still under her mound of blankets, listening to the sweep of the wooden baseball bat dragging across her carpet. Dipper’s silhouette – still too small and thin for fifteen – stops in front of her bed. His eyes, now and like every other time, are his only discernible feature in the dark.

He slowly raises one lanky arm, bat in hand.

Minutes later, Mabel is sobbing at his side, cradling his head in her lap. The wound isn’t deep, probably won’t do any lasting damage, but the blood soaks her nightshirt and threatens bile from her throat. The bat lays abandoned.

Dipper’s stare is vacant, but otherwise normal.

“Push me down the stairs, Mabel.”

“Dipper – !”

“Mabel, please. Trust me.”

They argue in hushed whispers, Mabel choking back whimpered protests, but ultimately they agree. Dipper knows it’s his fault, would never let his sister take the blame for her defense against something he can no longer control. She helps him up on unsteady feet, slides him across the room to her door.

His crash, as they predicted, is enough to send their parents flying out of their room, but not before Mabel can sneak away to hide her blood-stained night clothes and crawl back under the covers to feign ignorance.

Later, at the hospital, he feeds his parents a clumsy story while they fuss over him, adjusting the dressings on his head when the nurse isn’t looking. Mabel is curled up on the chair beside him, but Dipper refuses to meet her eyes.

*

He wakes up in locked bathrooms, in barricaded closets, in knots bound to tables and chairs. He’s almost always covered in cuts and bruises, finding new ones every other week, and he takes to avoiding mirrors. He wears long sleeves and jeans on the hottest days and wonders when he’ll start to remember, wonders if it’ll ever stop.

Mabel is never far away after these scenes, usually showing up shortly after he wakes to release him and tend to whatever new wounds he may have inflicted upon himself. She only ever offers a simple explanation, and then he knows not to ask.

“Bill came back.”

He thanks whatever gods there are above for his sister every night, prays that her constant interventions will be enough to prevent him from hurting anyone else.

He prays.

*

He starts dozing off during classes. He sits in the back rows to avoid the angry glares from his teachers when he jolts awake at his desk. He finds that he can time himself if he focuses, makes sure he never falls asleep for more than a few minutes at a time. Mabel doesn’t take any of the honors classes he does, and he dreads the thought of a scene happening without her there.

During one particular AP Chemistry lecture, he starts furiously scratching the lead into his notes, covers the equations in graphite until they’re no longer visible. He scrawls and scrawls and scrawls until the pencil snaps in two, and when he’s done, the shapes have spelled out one word across the page.

_Bill._

*

He’s standing in the kitchen. He doesn’t know why there’s a carving knife on the floor at his feet, can’t quite place why his hands are shaking so much. He has the vague, phantom sensation of his limbs being bound.

It’s so distracting that it takes him a minute to notice the blood bubbling up from his hands and wrists.

He hears a commotion and a strangled cry behind him, and Mabel collapses in the doorway, out of breath and clutching a torn set of bed sheets. A black eye is forming on her face, and Dipper feels his heart drop.

The look on her face shatters him.

Days later, when Mabel finally peels the bandages off his hands and arms and her black eye is fading beneath the makeup, he’s greeted by two angry red scars, one on each palm. The thin, vertical slits of skin stare back at him like snake eyes. He can no longer shake the feeling of always being watched.

*

He stands in front of the bathroom mirror for a long, long time one evening, while the steam from his shower clouds the air around him. Every part of his body aches, and the sight of his scarred, bruised flesh makes him feel sick. He holds his hands palms up to inspect the fading gashes under the light, and when his eyes flit back up to the mirror, he sees his scars reflected in his pupils.

He wants to break the mirror, smash it to pieces and bury himself under the shards. Instead he drags himself into the shower, curls up on the floor of the bathtub until the water runs cold.

When he looks in the mirror again, his heavy, tired brown eyes are staring back.

*

He slips away one night while Mabel studies upstairs in her room. When she emerges, her parents inform her that he’s gone on a walk, and she quells the panic that immediately rises up in her chest.

She asks her mom if she can borrow the car, and hopes it sounds nonchalant.

She drives for ages, first around their small town, through parks and schoolyards, then inches further and further into the urban sprawl that surrounds them. His phone rings and rings and rings, switched to silent and discarded under his bed, unbeknownst to Mabel.

One of his favorite things as a child was the sight of the bridge lit up at night, a shining beacon across the bay that leads to their home. Her foot gets heavier on the pedal as she speeds down the interstate.

He’s perched on the steel railing that runs along the cliffside, body swaying in the strong winds while the angry waves crash yards below him. His hoodie is on the ground at his feet, short-sleeved shirt clinging to his torso. In the flood of light from the car Mabel can see the more recent damage in full detail, long scrapes on his arms tinged red, bruises stark and purple on his pale skin.

When she reaches him, he slowly turns to look at her, and his eyes are hollow and dull. There’s a streak of blood across his cheek. The lights from the bridge are shimmering behind him, and she swears that his pupils turn to slits.

He regards her for a long minute, then turns back around and grips the railing. The waves roar louder beneath him.

“Dipper!” She has to yell above the wind and waves, and she’s still not sure he hears her. “Dipper, let’s get in the car and go home! Please?”

He doesn’t move.

“Dipper – ”

“I don’t think Dipper’s here anymore.” His voice is strange and garbled against the wind, but his expression doesn’t change. “Come back next time, sister.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this anymore,” she cries. “We’ll get you help. We’ll fix this. Don’t we always fix things, Dipper?”

“I don’t think so. Not this time.” For a moment she thinks his voice changes, drops back down to its usual timbre. His body cants forward ever so slightly, threatening to drop.

“DIPPER!” She grabs his free hand and he allows it, though she can feel the tension in his muscles. When he looks down, his eyes have changed again.

Despite his unnerving stare, which she forces herself to meet, his voice is broken and defeated and so entirely _Dipper_. “You’re too late,” he manages to squeak out. “It’s only him now.”

“Bill’s not _real_ , Dipper!” She grips his hand tighter, and he screws his eyes shut as if to block out her words. “I’m here, I’ve got you, and he’s never going to hurt you again.”

His hand slowly slides out of hers, slack against the railing. His eyes open, large and mournful and just faintly slitted beneath his tears.

“Sorry, sister.”

She reaches for his hand again, and he lets go.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy reading, kids!


End file.
